Libby Copeland is a staff writer for the Washington Post. She started her career with the Post in 1998 as an intern in the Style department,[1] and now covers Washington politics.[2] [3] In 2005, she was the Feature Specialty Reporting winner for the large circlulation papers in the annual competition held by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.[4] She has appeared on MSNBC, CNN and NPR.
Copeland wrote primarily about the McCain and Edwards campaigns during the 2008 election, and profiled political figures including Joe and Jill Biden and Cindy and Meghan McCain. Her coverage of the 2006 Congressional mid-term elections has also been both lauded [5][6] and enthusastically criticisized [7][8] by the blogging community, and Wonkette called one of her pieces "fawning," [9].
She wrote articles for the Post about Washington, DC area graffiti artist Borf (aka John Tsombikos) and has been the subject of some graffiti saying "Libby Copeland Writes Lies," possibly in connection with the Borf issue.[10]
She covered the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for the Post's features section, notably writing about figure skater Johnny Weir's free-wheeling shopping habits. She also wrote about modern-day Jersey "dandys" bent on reclaiming the slur "guido" in 2003, prompting some controversy.
Copeland was born in 1976. She is an alumna of Hastings High School of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. She went on to major in English at the University of Pennsylvania where, her junior year, she won the Thouron Award.[11]